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 David Singerman
David Singerman is a first-year student in MIT's Science, Technology, and Society doctoral program. His interests range widely over late-nineteenth-century science and engineering. An American history thesis at Columbia on the first domestic electrical meters led him to spend an MPhil year at Cambridge's Department of the History and Philosophy of Science. In his dissertation he showed how analytical chemistry became entangled in colonial cane sugar production and labor. To ensure the production of pure sugar the chemists became increasingly involved in the disciplining of the factory labor force, but in order to turn the factory into what was essentially a giant experiment, they had to deputize the very workers they were supposed to oversee.
At MIT, he intends to write his dissertation on Simon Newcomb, an American astronomer, mathematician, and conservative and curmudgeonly economist of the late nineteenth century. In the course of a fascinating career Newcomb moved (not always smoothly) between cultural, scientific, and political spheres; David's study will tease out the connections between Newcomb's economic marginalism and his astronomical perturbation theory on the one hand, and between the running of large businesses and new forms of scientific organization on the other.
In keeping with a longstanding interest in the history of racism and racialist science, David is also preparing for publication an article connecting J. M. Keynes's work on eugenics, ethics, and mathematics with his interest in genetics.
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